Lowe’s (LOW) Delivered Strong Results For 2020 Q4

Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE:LOW)’s history dates back to 1921 when founder Lucius Smith Lowe opened a hardware store in a small town located in North Carolina. The company improved its merchandise offerings and opened hundreds of stores over the years to become the world’s second-biggest home improvement retailer. Today, it operates 1,974 stores across the U.S. and Canada, on top of 230 stores operated by dealers.

Mooresville, North Carolina-based Lowe’s benefitted from increased consumer spending on home improvement projects during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The lockdown restrictions forced the working community and students to work from home. Many of them had to spend money to transform their homes in order to work efficiently during the lockdown period. Being the second-biggest player in the home-improvement industry, Lowe’s capitalized on the trend, with 2020 sales reaching $90 billion.

Lowe’s on Wednesday announced solid results for the fourth quarter. The company reported earnings of $1.32 per share for the three months ended January 29, significantly higher than 66 cents per share in the comparable period of 2019. Excluding nonrecurring items, the adjusted profit of $1.33 per share easily surpassed the consensus forecast of $1.21 per share.

Revenue for the quarter came in at $20.31 billion, translating to a year-over-year surge of 26.7 percent. Comparatively, analysts on average were expecting Lowe’s to post revenue of $19.42 billion. Same-store sales in the quarter jumped 28.1 percent, beating the consensus estimate of 22 percent.

Commenting on the quarterly performance, CEO Marvin Ellison said in a statement, “Strong execution enabled us to meet broad-based demand driven by the continued consumer focus on the home, with growth over 16% in all merchandising departments, over 19% across all U.S. regions and 121% on Lowes.com.”

Lowe’s acquired $3.4 billion worth of its common stock during the fourth quarter. Looking forward, it plans to repurchase $9 billion worth of shares during the current fiscal year.